Some areas of technical graphics fidelity, namely shaders and textures, combine to make what is probably the only area of game design that improves constantly, generally at a fairly steady and predictable rate. Scale (the size of game worlds/levels) is something that also continues to increase, although the artistic aspects of level design as well as attention to detail aren't so quick to improve. But many aspects of game design, some of the most important ones even, have either not improved or have gotten worse compared to games from 10-15 years ago, believe it or not, and these are the things we discuss starting on the next page.

Of all the game design aspects we discuss in this article, this is the most important one. Let's start with
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The term "RPG" or Role-Playing Game is thrown around too loosely in the gaming industry, to the point where the term has become highly misused and misleading. This article will serve as clarification. There are a number of games that share gameplay mechanics with many video game RPGs, yet they are not RPGs because these gameplay mechanics alone have nothing to do with role-playing.

To avoid confusion, one must actually understand what "role-playing" means and where it comes from (despite the term being self-explanatory). It comes from pen and paper RPGs back in the 1970s, pioneered by Dungeons & Dragons. Role-playing exists in the same form in all pen and paper RPGs, and all of the
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It is time for our yearly gaming PC building guide! This time we have numerous categories based on budget. For each PC build we exclude operating system, peripherals, and display, since those are all things you may or may not have already plus not every operating system choice costs money (Linux distros).

Our choices are by no means the only ones, but these featured PC builds will help get anyone started. We are using Newegg as our point of reference since they charge no taxes for most states. Prices fluctuate of course, so our listed prices are not necessarily final.

Right now, GPU prices have skyrocketed once again due to demand for cryptocurrency mining. Because of this, we have omitted
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The video game industry has expanded greatly over the years, leading to all kinds of new genres and subgenres. As a result, there is some confusion among gamers about video game genres, with some of them being misused and misunderstood. This article serves as a glossary for all known video game genres and subgenres, and it will be updated over time.

Action Adventure - A very vague genre that can really apply to many kinds of games. Often times they are Third-Person Shooter games as well, like Uncharted and Rise of the Tomb Raider, but not always as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt shows. But such games are usually called Action Adventure first and foremost, to emphasize that the plot takes you across
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We are close to the mid point of 2017, so we decided it was time for a mid year gaming review. In this article we go over games that have been released in 2017 so far, provide our opinions of them, and then look at what's left to come for 2017. We will also look at mods released this year.

To make this page easier to navigate, spoiler tags are used to conceal everything written about each game. There are no actual spoilers on this page with only one exception: we spoil one quest in Mass Effect: Andromeda in order to demonstrate how absolutely incredibly awful its writing is.

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil Remaster

Spoiler:

A faithful remaster of a 1998 FPS classic, Night Dive Studios pulls it off again by not trying to fix what was never broken. The core game is left intact, identical to the original, and the only real changes are technological improvements.

The game itself is a very good FPS with unique environments, incredible enemy variety (over 30 different enemies, basically unheard of these days), and some of the coolest and most unique weapons of any shooter game such as the Shredder, Razor Wind, Nuke (although there is a gun like this in the first Turok), and Cerebral Bore.

The first game in this franchise, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, was also remastered by Night Dive Studios back in 2015. Both of them even have a level editor for mod creation!

Serious Sam: Fusion 2017

Spoiler:

The most ambitious remaster featured on this article, Serious Sam: Fusion 2017 ports Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter (2009), Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter (2010), Serious Sam 3: BFE (2011), the VR versions to the latest version of Serious Engine, called Serious Engine 2017. At present, you must own Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter and Serious Sam 3: BFE if you want to play them in Fusion 2017, as Fusion 2017 only comes with Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter for now.

Serious Sam Fusion 2017, a remaster of both a 2009 and 2010 game (and soon a 2011 game) which were remakes of a 2001 and 2002 game respectively.

Yearly sequels and rehashes are most common in the gaming industry today, and once the newest game is released these studios tend to completely ignore all past ones.

But some game studios set a different example. A few game studios care more about their games and continue updating them over time, not only fixing bugs and adding content but also upgrading the engine to keep up with modern standards. It is these examples that we will be focusing on. This type of game support is very common in MMOs, which is almost a separate industry as MMO players tend to care very little about graphical fidelity. So in this article we focus primarily on games other than MMOs that have similar long term support.

Before getting on with the pros and cons, let us first list the most prominent games we will be using as examples. These are not the
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Many PC games are able to be modified, and when game developers support this and provide tools for creating modifications (mods), wondrous things can happen. It is not uncommon for modders to create total conversion modifications that are equivalent to an entirely new game, and often times these mods are even better than AAA games in the same genre (not surprising given how AAA games are generally lower quality).

Sometimes, such mods become full games themselves. Game studios notice the quality of the mod, hire the creators, and create a new version out of it that is released as a game. Other times, the modders themselves create a studio and go on to improve upon their mod and release it as a game. In fact, the top three most played games on Steam every day began as mods, and these games/mods are featured below. In this article, we present a list of popular video games that originated as mods.

Alien Swarm is a free, open source Top-down Shooter (primarily cooperative multiplayer) that lives up to its name. Players shoot down waves of aliens with a vast arsenal of weaponry.

The original mod was made for Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2004), and like many other UT2004 total conversion mods it released the same year as the game itself. Truly the golden era for multiplayer gaming as UT2004, thanks to mods, became almost an infinite number of games in one within a year of its release.

Valve Corporation hired the mod creators and released it as a game in 2010 on Source engine. The mod remains available to this day, and can be found on ModDB.

Black Mesa was one of the most anticipated and most famous mods of all time. It is an unofficial remake of Half-Life, a classic FPS game. The mod was eight years in the making, and the wait was worth it. The release was more polished than most AAA games although far from perfect in stability, but was otherwise exactly
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Tactical shooters can be truly amazing games; intense tests of tactical planning, execution, and coordination, in a more high stakes real-time shooter game format, not giving you time to pause and think things through. Scenario planning and execution is what sets this genre apart from other shooters. "Tactical shooter" is a term that is used too loosely in the gaming industry today. In this article we will introduce you to some serious tactical shooters, and explore the endangerment this genre currently faces.

Compared to tactical shooters, the opposing type of shooters are those filled with entropy. Entropy describes most of the Battlefield franchise, especially all of the recent ones. Entropy is the nature of Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes with lots of players. It is even inherent to Battlefield's Conquest mode and modes that strongly resemble it like Territory in Rising Storm/Red Orchestra 2 as well as Domination mode in Call of Duty. Yes, even Rising Storm/Red Orchestra 2 can hardly be called a tactical shooter. Join any server and you will see how entropic it is; players running around everywhere with only the most basic coordination thanks to the presence of a commander (something that was only recently reintroduced to the Battlefield franchise).

In Battlefield's Conquest and Red Orchestra's Territory modes, the goal is to hold more points (small areas on the map) than the enemy. Two teams of players spawn on opposite sides of the map, with capture points being in between, so each team will generally pursue them linearly. A player in the
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